Well, comparing Hamels to Lee might make some sense in terms of contracts, but the circumstances are much different. Through his age 27 season, Lee had a career 4.64 ERA and was fresh off a stint in the minors. It took a few years for him to establish himself as one of the best pitchers in the game and earn that hefty pay day.

For Hamels, there’s little question he’s already among the elite in baseball. He’s perhaps not on the current MLB Mt. Rushmore of pitchers, but there’s a good case to be made he’s among the top five or six in the N.L.

In fact, Hamels is a particularly rare commodity: A lefty with immense success at a young age.

Through his Age 27 season, Hamels has already enjoyed four seasons of 4.0 WAR or better, has a career ERA+ of 126 and has the second lowest career WHIP of any active starting pitcher with at least 1,000 innings pitched.

How impressive is that?

Here’s the complete list of pitchers in the past 50 years with at least 20 career WAR, a 120 ERA+ or better and a WHIP of 1.20 or lower through his Age 27 season:

I count six Hall of Famers, two more who should get in (Clemens, Pedro) and another half-dozen borderline candidates. The 21 pitchers on this list have accounted for 28 Cy Young awards.

And if we limit the list to strictly left-handers, we come up with an even more exclusive club: Johan Santana, Sandy Koufax and Colbert Michael Hamels.

So when we put it in those terms, Hamels’ agent is certainly justified in looking for a massive pay day for his client. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t also causes for concern.

Yes, our list includes a number of Hall-of-Famers, but it also includes a few cautionary tales.

After his Age 27 season, Brett Saberhagen started 30 games in a season just once more in his career and had seven years in which he started fewer than 20.

At age 27, Dean Chance had won 110 career games with a 2.77 ERA. He’d win just 18 more games in his career with an ERA a full run higher and was out of baseball by age 31.

At age 27, the injury bug caught up with Jake Peavy, and he’s gone just 23-19 with a 4.35 ERA since then. He hasn’t made 30 starts in a season since 2007.

And then there’s Johan Santana, who at age 27 won the Cy Young, going 19-6 with a 2.77 ERA for Minnesota in 2006. A year later, those numbers dipped a tad as he approached free agency before he was finally dealt to the Mets and inked a six-year, $136.5 million contract after the 2008 season. He’s made 30 starts just once in the four years since and he missed all of 2011.

Of course, all of that is only underscoring an idea we obviously already know all too well: All big contracts for pitchers come with an inherent and obvious risk.

But how big is that risk?

Let’s not compare Hamels to the best of his counterparts. Instead, let’s look at some a handful of the pitchers Baseball Reference says are Hamels’ most comparable careers through Age 27[27].

(Notes: All stats are 162-game averages for all seasons before age 27 followed by the five seasons immediately after. I also chose to ignore No. 5 on Hamels’ similarity score list because Mickey Lolich was used as a reliever for a significant portion of his early career.)

1. John Smiley

Age

WAR

ERA+

WHIP

K/BB

Thru 27

2.5

105

1.174

2.35

After 27

2.6

100

1.295

2.91

No. 2 Greg Swindell

Age

WAR

ERA+

WHIP

K/BB

Thru 27

4.3

112

1.222

3.35

After 27

0.9

93

1.346

2.72

No. 3 Dennis Leonard

Age

WAR

ERA+

WHIP

K/BB

Thru 27

3.5

112

1.245

2.22

After 27

3.0

104

1.267

1.97

No. 4 Sid Fernandez

Age

WAR

ERA+

WHIP

K/BB

Thru 27

3.5

108

1.142

2.35

After 27

4.5

115

1.141

2.60

No. 6 Josh Beckett

Age

WAR

ERA+

WHIP

K/BB

Thru 27

3.8

117

1.228

2.85

After 27

4.8

113

1.206

3.56

No. 7 Kevin Millwood

Age

WAR

ERA+

WHIP

K/BB

Thru 27

2.9

117

1.216

2.77

After 27

2.5

103

1.357

2.47

Aside from Beckett, I don’t think we’d consider any of those names in Hamels’ class upon first glance, but they actually help his case a bit.

None of them had particularly stellar careers after Age 27 — and injuries cropped up more in virtually every case* — but neither did they have an immediate marked drop in performance. For the most part (essentially aside from Swindell), they held onto similar numbers for the next five years with a marginal decline over the course of that span.

(*Note: I’m not trying to discount the significance of injuries, but of course those are virtually impossible to predict. In each case — as with Hamels — these pitchers were relatively healthy up to age 27, so there were few indicators that would change immediately afterward. That’s an inherent risk in any signing, so instead, I’ve chosen to strictly focus on performance rather than durability for this discussion. If you want to argue against inking a pitcher long-term due to the inherent risk of injury, I’m right there with you.)

So what does all this mean? Well, it probably means that Hamels and his agent will get a contract that easily outpaces the five-year, $85-million deal Jared Weaver signed last season and probably comes closer to (if not exceeds) the contract Cliff Lee inked with the Phillies in December 2010.

Will that deal be with the Phillies?

Perhaps. But if there is risk in any mega-deal for pitchers, it’s not hard assume owning three such contracts has a significant potential for disaster.

And perhaps more importantly, there’s this: We’ve spent the past few weeks criticizing Amaro for not understanding the market for closers this offseason and jumping into bed with Jonathan Papelbon too soon. But next year, Hamels won’t be the only arm on the market[28]. He’ll be joined, potentially, by Zach Grienke, Matt Cain, Gavin Floyd, Dan Haren, Anibal Sanchez, Jake Peavy, Ervin Santana, James Shields and Carlos Zambrano.

There’s a good case to be made that Hamels is still at the head of that class, and he’ll get his money regardless. But at this point, the Phillies can afford to wait because there’s little chance the asking price is going to get much higher than it already is.